Whispers in the Forest Chapter
Copyright© 2025 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 1
Suburb of Sandton, Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa.
When I think about Sandton City, I don’t just picture a shopping centre — I see the heartbeat of Johannesburg’s modern identity. Even now, it’s impossible for me to look at the skyline without that iconic complex rising above it, reflecting the city’s ambition and restless drive. Sandton City has always been more than a place to shop; it’s a symbol of how far South Africa has come, blending world-class retail, leisure, and business into one vibrant hub.
It’s strange to imagine that back in 1973, when it first opened, this place was surrounded not by skyscrapers but by sandy horse trails and farmland. The developers, Rapp and Maister, built it on behalf of the Liberty Group, and that bold decision turned a quiet community into what we now call Africa’s richest square mile. Sandton City didn’t just grow with the district — it created it, shaping the financial capital of South Africa, where global business and luxury lifestyle meet.
Today, more than three hundred of the world’s most sought-after brands sit under its roof. The eco-conscious explore the Food District, families drift toward the Fun District, and those with a taste for opulence stroll through the Diamond Walk, chandeliers sparkling above boutiques like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Cartier. It isn’t just shopping — it’s spectacle, theatre, an experience that rivals the best retail destinations in the world.
Millions pass through its doors every year — locals, tourists, business travellers. Some come for fashion, others for entertainment, and many simply to soak in the atmosphere of a centre that has won multiple awards for design and innovation. To me, it’s always felt like a crossroads: where Johannesburg’s energy meets global culture, where you can grab a bite, attend a meeting, and step into a luxury boutique all before sunset. There’s even a Muslim prayer room tucked away on Level 7, outside Entrance 27 — something most people don’t know unless they’ve wandered enough to find it.
Behind the scenes, Sandton City is co-owned by Liberty Group and Pareto Limited, managed by JHI Retail Proprietary Limited. But it feels like it belongs to all of us who’ve watched it expand into the 128,000-square-metre giant it is today. With parking for 10,000 cars and links to hotels, offices, and the Sandton Convention Centre just a five-minute walk away, it’s not just a mall — it’s a city within a city.
And that’s where I found myself that afternoon, sitting at a small table in the Naked Coffee coffee shop, enjoying my second mug after a light supper of Dirty Eggs — poached eggs with fresh tomato, rocket, chevin and cumin honey, topped with dukkah crumble on whole wheat bread. The kind of meal that makes you feel virtuous even when you’re exhausted.
“Ruan, you’re the first person I’ve seen who eats eggs for supper,” George remarked, draining the last of his coffee. George Little wasn’t little at all — at six foot three he was tall and athletically built, and my partner in the business. He ran the Gauteng office, and I had the southern part of the country.
“I was looking for something light, and this was perfect,” I chuckled.
“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to run. It’s getting late and I still need to pick up my wife.” He stood, stretching. “Good to see you again in person. Are you going to stick around a while, or flying back home?”
“I’ll crash at the airport hotel and buzz off early tomorrow.”
“Good. Then I’ll catch you again sometime — other than on email, Skype, and whatever calls.” He shook my hand.
“Take care, George, and say hello to Gwen for me,” I replied.
“I will. Be good and be safe,” He greeted, turned and joined the herds of people outside.
As George walked away, I signalled the waitress for a refill, lifting my hand just high enough for her to notice. The remaining warmth of the cup comforted my fingers, though the taste had already gone flat. Outside the glass balustrade, the mall’s evening drone swelled and shifted — voices, footsteps, distant laughter, the metallic sound of escalators — a restless tide that never receded. For a moment, I felt the current of the city moving around me, threading through my ribs, tugging at something half asleep inside me, as if change were already unfolding and I was the last to notice.
I longed for the serenity and stillness of the quiet Knysna forests, the damp bark and filtered light, the salt-tinged wind sweeping in from the lagoon. Anything but this — the ceaseless, caffeinated heartbeat of Johannesburg and Sandton, always pushing, always reaching, always devouring the hours before a man could name them. I was a visitor here, yet the city acted as if it owned me.
Why I lingered, I don’t know. By all logic, I should have stood, stretched my legs, and made my way to the hotel. But sometimes fate has other ideas, and sometimes a man mistakes fate for simple indecision.
My coffee was nearly finished when the waitress returned to clear away the empty plate from my meal, lifting it with the brisk efficiency of someone who understood rush hours better than the tides. I’d already taken care of the bill and added a generous tip, more out of habit than gratitude. The plan — the sensible, ordinary plan — was to drain the last mouthful, gather myself, and leave.
Yet something invisible held me in place. A pressure behind the sternum. A whisper with no words. A feeling that I should linger just a little longer — that if I stood up now, I would step away from something I was meant to meet.
That was when she entered.
She moved through the door with a hesitant step, walked up to the counter, and stood there as though unsure whether she belonged. At first, I barely noticed her — a girl in a green long-sleeve sweater, hood drawn up, head slightly bowed. Her eyes were obscured by oversized Gucci sunglasses, an odd choice indoors, yet I dismissed it. My mind was elsewhere, drifting through distant forests and salt winds.
The second time I noticed her, she was no longer at the counter but taking the table beside mine. She sat half facing me, half guarding herself, as though prepared to flee. The waitress arrived with her order: a cup of coffee and a pastry on a small white plate, steam curling upward like a faint signal.
As the waitress turned to leave, the girl spoke — not loudly, but sharply enough to catch the edge of the air.
“Do you perhaps know this place and where I can find it?” she asked the waitress, her voice tight, breath held beneath the words. She took a A4-sized photograph out of her shoulder bag and showed it to the waitress.
I froze. My mug hovered halfway to my lips, suspended like a pendulum deciding whether to fall, or not, because I knew that tower. I knew the Neo-Gothic arch of the entrance, narrow and pale against the surrounding stone. I knew exactly which of the slate tiles on the conical roof were currently missing, letting the rain drip in merciless threads into the main hall. It was Château Falaises Brumeux. My Château.
It lay hidden deep in the Outeniqua mountains, veiled by forest and mist, invisible from any road, reachable only by a track that washed away each winter and had to be found again by instinct. It wasn’t on any postcards. It wasn’t even on maps. Nor on Google Earth. It did not exist to those who had not already been damned by it. So how — how in the crowded heart of Sandton City — did a girl in a hooded sweater have a photograph of my private estate?
“No ... no...” the barista stammered. “It looks like a castle, ja, but it’s not around here. Haven’t seen anything like that in Jo’burg. Maybe somewhere out west, but not here...”
“Thank you...” the girl sighed, shoulders falling.
The photograph she held was old — at least fifty or seventy years. Before the fires. Before the whispers in the walls.
Something else struck me then. She spoke English, but with an accent I had heard years ago. She rolled her r’s softly. Her vowels were pure and rounded. The word “this” became “zis.” “Find” sounded like “faint.” A Russian lilt — unmistakable once heard again.
A pulse of recognition — or dread — tightened behind my ribs.
I swallowed, set my mug down, and spoke before caution could catch up to me.
“Pardon me, Madam,” I said, leaning slightly toward her, “but may I see that photo, please?”
She jolted as if I’d snapped a live wire against her skin. Her head whipped toward me, the hood slipping back just enough to reveal a streak of deep, copper-red hair. Behind the dark Gucci lenses, I felt rather than saw her eyes — wide, startled, assessing. She didn’t answer. She only drew the photograph toward her chest, fingers tightening until her knuckles blanched.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said gently, the way you speak to a skittish horse. “But I couldn’t help overhearing. You were asking about Château Falaises Brumeux.”
Her breath caught. She scanned the café — the barista, the couple by the window, the mall beyond the glass balustrade — checking if anyone else had heard.
“You know it?” she asked at last, her voice guarded, the accent thick with caution.
“I know it intimately,” I said. “I know the clock in the main tower froze at three-fifteen six decades ago. I know the East Wing has been restored. And I know the West Wing is still sealed off because of dry rot ... among other things.”
Her lips parted. A crack in the armour. She eased the photograph onto the table, just an inch — but enough to count as permission.
“How?” she whispered. “The maps ... they say nothing.”
“Maps don’t care about ruins,” I said. I slid the photo closer, and she drew two more from her shoulder bag. Children running across the terrace — ghosts of a happier time. “But I do. I bought the deed three years ago.”
She stared at me, the disbelief almost childlike.
“You ... own it?”
“For my sins, yes. It’s my money pit in the mountains.” I took a sip, the coffee long gone cold. “So tell me — why is a young woman sitting in a Sandton City coffee shop with a seventy-year-old photo of my house?”
She tensed again, shutters slamming back into place. “That is personal. I just need to go there. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s a twelve-hour drive if you don’t hit a stray kudu in the Karoo. Or two-hour flight by airplane, and the forest road to the château could be washed out. You’ll need a 4×4 to get up the mountain road.”
“I have money,” she said, desperation leaking through the veneer. “I can pay for a car. A driver. A plane.”
I exhaled slowly. “Look, miss—”
“Lena,” she said sharply. “My name is Lena.”
“Alright, Lena. I’m Ruan Venter.” I leaned in. “If you’re flashing cash and asking for a hideout in the middle of nowhere, you’re running from something. And I don’t pick up hitchhikers with trouble following behind them.”
She drew a breath to argue — or lie — but her eyes flicked past me toward the entrance.
Two men walked in.
Not shoppers.
Dark suits tailored too perfectly. Earpieces coiled behind their ears like translucent serpents. Eyes sweeping the room with cold, methodical precision.
Lena went still. She pulled her hood forward, shrinking into her seat, her hand trembling against the table.
“Chyort! Kak zhe oni tak bystro menya nashli...”, she breathed a curse in Russian. (Dammit! How did they find me so fast... )
I didn’t look at the men. I looked at her. And without thinking, the old instincts — Angola airstrips, cargo runs, bribes at gunpoint — slid back into place like a magazine into a chamber.
“U tebya yest dve minuty, prezhde chem oni zamechat tebya,” I murmured. (You have two minutes before they notice you.)
Her head snapped toward me, sunglasses slipping down her nose, revealing eyes an impossible shade of emerald-green — wide, shocked, alive.
“You ... you speak...”
“Russian?” I shrugged. “Cockpit Russian. Enough to keep me breathing.”
I nodded subtly toward the service door leading to the kitchen. “Slushay menya. (Listen to me.) Those men at the entrance? They look like they get paid to be very thorough. If you want to reach the Château, stop arguing and start moving.”
She looked at the men. Then at me. Fear burned bright in her eyes — but beneath it, something harder, something that had weathered storms and refused to break.
“Can you get a plane?” she asked in English.
“Yes, a King Air 350,” I said. “It’s at Grand Central. Fast enough. High enough.”
She seized her bag and the photos. “Take me to the château.”
I dropped a fifty-rand note on the table for the waitress and stood.
“Let’s go, tovarishch,” I said quietly. “And try to look like you’re with me.”
I didn’t wait for her to answer. I reached for her hand — not grabbing, not yanking, just a confident clasp, the kind a boyfriend uses to guide his date through a crowd. Her fingers were ice cold, but she didn’t pull away. She fell into step beside me, head lowered, her shoulder pressed lightly against my arm as if we’d done this before.
“Don’t look back,” I murmured, steering her toward the service corridor that bypassed the main entrance. “You’re supposed to be bored, shopped out. I’m the guy dragging you home.”
We slipped through the kitchen swing doors just as the two suits reached the barista station. For a split second I caught one showing a phone screen to the tattooed hipster behind the counter. Confusion creased his brow. Wrong moment, right time. Too close.
The service passage smelled of bleach, dish soap, and stale grease. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing like trapped insects. We pushed through the back exit and emerged into the side concourse and pressed through an emergency exit back into the mall where the mall sounds surged back — clattering heels, distant chatter, canned music, the hum of a city that never stopped moving.
“Where is your car?” Lena whispered, breath tight and shallow.
“Level Four parking. Green zone. It’s a bit of a hike, so stay close to me.”
“They will check the exits,” she said, panic threading into her voice. “Volkov is thorough.”
“Volkov?” I asked as we stepped towards an escalator. “Big guy with a scar on his neck?”
“No. Volkov is the one who sends them. He is ... persistent.”
“Well, I’m stubborn,” I said. “Let’s see which trait travels faster.”
We cut through the maze of the mall, dodging Woolworths bags, perfume clouds, and clusters of after-work shoppers moving like shoals of fish. Every time a security guard passed, I felt Lena stiffen against me. I tightened my grip — not pulling, just anchoring.
We reached the elevators. Too many people. Too many eyes. Too many phone cameras.
“Stairs,” I said, veering toward the fire escape door. “Faster. And fewer cameras.”
The door slammed behind us, echoing down the concrete corridor. We descended into the garage levels, the air cooling with every flight, filling with the metallic tang of exhaust fumes and warm rubber. Our footsteps bounced off the walls — hers light and quick, mine measured.
My Land Rover waited near a structural column, matte green and unapologetic, towering over the sedans around it like a veteran among recruits. My second love — not as reliable as the King Air, but almost as fast when it mattered.
I unlocked it. Lena was inside before the dome light fully blinked on, curling into the passenger seat like a hunted animal. I got behind the wheel and locked the doors, the click sounding louder than it should have.
“Down,” I said.
She slid low, knees to her chest, hoodie pulled over her face.
I started the engine. The diesel rumble filled the garage, comforting and crude. I backed out slowly, watching the mirrors. No black suits running yet. But Sandton City had boom gates, and boom gates meant hesitation — death for anyone being chased.
We approached the exit queue. I already had the ticket in hand. The line crawled.